


through the same door

by bewitchingwind



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, F/F, Gender Dysphoria, Lucid Dreaming, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Post-War, Trans Female Character, Trans Ferdinand von Aegir, Trans Hubert von Vestra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25455418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewitchingwind/pseuds/bewitchingwind
Summary: gentle fingers lingering in hair, pale strands like the links of time. you want to have long hair too, don't you?a weird mad little tale following the journey of hubert (and ferdinand's) gender presentation & mental health over the years into the future.written for FE trans week.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30
Collections: Fire Emblem Trans Week 2020!





	through the same door

**Author's Note:**

> set mainly after hubert and ferdinand are married, a fair few years after the war and twsitd stuff when ferdinand has retired from being the prime minister and they are finally reclining from public duty for the sake of their health. they are just starting to work things out. edelgard is married to an unspecified woman so the reader is free to decide which.
> 
> i play around creatively with pronouns, which is always totally intentional and a reflection of hubert's complex mental situation at each point in time etc. poor darling! We Are, Again, Working Things Out Here. the format is really just snatches of her memory and experience, rather than some kind of description of reality, so things might get weird. and i use intentionally unconventional grammar and capitalisation for my own flair i suppose, because I Simply Do What I Want! that's just how it is! i hope it isn't terribly difficult to read!
> 
> very light reference to alcohol, abstract delicate references to self-harm/suicidal feelings and just... poor mental health (anxiety? unreality? memory loss? it's a Lot. this is a story about being ill). and dysphoria. i don't know how to describe the complicated content, i'm sorry. it could be quite emotional to read if you suffer from mental illness and The Genders, but that is exactly why i'm here, and it was a deeply cathartic experience to write and process for me. so there's that.
> 
> i hope you enjoy this little journey with my girls!
> 
> •and I, I will remember how to fly  
> •unlock the heavens in my mind  
> •follow my love back through the same secret door
> 
> secret door ~ evanescence

*

gentle fingers lingering in hair, pale strands like the links of time.

"you want to have long hair too, don't you? ... don't you?"

hubert is quiet for a long time, feeling his young lady's eyes upon him through the mirror, like opening a door. his hands slow there. he picks them up again carefully - she cannot trust him if she sees weakness in him. they will fail.

"... oh, i don't know. it would only get in the way."

  
**

"we cannot talk of this here," he hisses insistently, looking around him for intruders, four knives down his legs, three different poisons in the pocket of his shoe. she seizes his hands to still his wild eyes. touching her always draws tears to them, now. during the long five years, this was only ever through her hair, shining threads of destiny. being with ferdinand taunts him about the possibility of being alive alive, but it hurts most when her majesty tries to suggest it. with her own view having already turned toward the future. don't look at me, don't look at me, do not turn your clear gaze upon me. i have nothing to give to you any more. i'm so sorry.

"i know you. i brought you here."  
"you did, you did."  
"you followed me. you say you prepared the red path before us. i saw you do it. you were always just ahead of me." _but i'm behind now, aren't i?_ "you cannot believe that i would be looking up into your eyes all this time, and not have noticed your hidden heart."

she doesn't know that there isn't anything left, not for him. her own stunted buds and leaves are growing in the new light of the dawn. (once in shambhala, he thought he was dying. he had tried to let go, then.) _he_ wasn't meant to make it this far. his duty was over.

"no matter who we become next, your eyes will always be the same." she embraces him and he falls into it like into a mother. "that's a good thing."

**

"your dark bishop robes! well, what's left of them after bernadetta's skilful modifications, hmm? and then i married you in them," hubert's husband chirrups in distracted satisfaction as he rifles through their closets. they need to downsize if ferdinand is going to be able to vacate the prime minister's quarters on time for his successor's move into the estate. if only having quite so many clothes could somehow be avoided.

"and then you married me in them," hubert acknowledges, arranging his husband's growing jewellery collection into different boxes, as per colour category. it's pretty work.

"oh, but you're wearing a skirt today too, aren't you?" the man's innocent face emerges questioningly from the chaos, a silk cravat fallen onto the crown of his head like a bonnet.

"observant this evening, aren't you?" but hubert does obediently cast back a hand to draw out the fabric of his work skirt, splaying the velvety folds to their full breadth.

"ah, i love this one. i always wonder what you're hiding up there."  
hubert raises his brow delicately. while his husband coughs into his sleeve, he does a mental count.

"oh, only four, dear. but if i had time to hoik up every layer, there's a fifth. not as to hand as with trousers, but yes, roomier. you're quite safe with me."

"goodness," ferdinand mumbles coyly, wide-eyed and looking weak in the stomach, or something at any rate... "but you can't run in it, can you?"

he does not answer that.

*

he is today wearing his sixth skirt of the week. so is ferdinand. oh dear.

"we really don't do it the same way as others, do we," he remarks after they are arranged in bed, meaning a lot of things. ferdie laughs back in a way that surprises him, light but rich like white wine. hubert entwines their arms closely, his heart seized. it's really true.

"anyway, you know, there is the matter of arranging our names, if we are to settle. we have an opportunity, as we no longer have to be publically consistent." ferdinand chatters while coiling his own hand around his, rings clinking together reassuringly.

"so, vestra-aegir was it? or will you let me be an aegir now?" the years-old point of rigorous argument unsettles the air like dust flying, but ferdinand sighs dramatically and dismissively crosses his ankles - this time actually easing the atmosphere. he isn't going to let it fly easily, however.

"i don't WANT you to be an aegir if i can't be a vestra!" at the no doubt moody turn of hubert's jaw ferdinand suddenly slaps the bedspread like the prime minister at table that he once was. "look, i'm going to be honest with you. i am proposing here today, that, erm, well how would you feel about becoming the vestraegirs?"

hubert turns over.

*

  
it takes about a week of heated and derisive debate before he realises it was a genuinely heartfelt suggestion. "what i understand least of all is how little i could ever have believed you'd abandon the name of aegir to the ether," he murmurs over their toast.

"oh, there is no nobler way for it to live on as this!" ferdinand cries gladly, knowing he has finally tripped his way past his husband's defences of reason and decorum. "deeds, not words! and, this way the name goes back to the land. now we shall merely be the caretakers of aegir, its guardians, not its masters. i like it that way, these days."

hubert sighs, admitting the matter won. he is too weary at the pace of their life to resist the harmless matter further. and despite the dread of an unseen, coming storm, one thing is true. "yes, i too am happy to live on those lands."

he really could have become an aegir, given up himself. this was the total surrender that love was becoming, for him. but no vestra or aegir has done the things in this world that they have done. he curls some stray hair behind his ear. he has let it grow past his shoulders. to be a vestraegir is to seek the truth.

  
*

  
"darling, be careful with your pillow just there."  
"yes, yes i know, your emotional support knives. draw me towards you then."

he does, and they lie enclosed together on the master bed of the new, modest vestraegir estate. a former grand inn, witness of many journeys. they are on one of their visits overseeing the reconstruction and redistribution of their lands - and there is candlelight playing over their faces. faces innocently naked of old titles.

"i always knew the vestra line would die with me." at hearing that little statement, ferdie presses lips to his collarbone tightly. in this certain, sad way he does lately. hubert tries to clarify. "i knew it would end with me."  
"i like this way best."  
"yes, this is the best way. the line utterly obliterated in the gayest way possible."

with a charming snort of a laugh, ferdie draws his face back but snakes a hand towards him excitedly. "there's so much for us to discover. i feel like as vestraegirs, we can do anything now. please, don't you think so?"

"because it's such a ridiculous name, nobody will even notice anything we do?"

ferdinand squints his eyes unappreciatively, then they blossom into a vivid, proud smile. it's so bewitching to see as to hurt, somehow, right now. "yes, indeed. it's so unbelievable as to be believable. that is what i am saying. i feel like we could finally be free under it. as we wish to be. do you not think so? don't you?"

the air is tangible with light alcohol, a heady atmosphere of possibility, and deliriously heavy with a thousand unspoken feelings: profound compatibility. and the wretched intoxication of looming truth.

"i'm a little nervous," hubert whispers meaningfully, an admission deeply unlike him. he feels near driven out of his mind by uncertain secrets, playing at their hair and whispering in their ears, both of them, always both of them. it's only ever going to be both of them. and he used to be a single master of so many secrets. for a long while now, it has all been running away from him. he looks deep into ferdinand's eyes, knowing his must be wide with fear he can now barely control.

"yes," ferdinand holds them steady and burning. he knows everything. "it really is a very silly name."

**

  
a letter from both of the imperial women, but written by edelgard. he reads it at his 'leisure': eyes scanning hastily and with pinpoint accuracy three times, as he always used to receive her correspondence. that it has been reduced to such personal, comparatively trivial content does not change the process. no, he admonishes himself, it is not trivial. he is only out of his depth.

"well? what are the tidings? nothing troublesome, i hope?"

"she sends her regards... and is basically intimating, in a veiled sort of manner, that they are considering having a child."

ferdie responds with a gush of emotion, and when the typhoon has subsided, is soon commenting, "i'm surprised she would include in a letter such an announcement. may i see?" slave to his wife's eager voice, he passes it reluctantly. lady edelgard would have anticipated this, after all. "now that is veiled! i would never have guessed. oh, she really wants to see you."

"i don't want her to see me." the uncertain silence which follows is embarrassing, somehow.

"that surprises me too. whyever not? we could find reason enough to ride there this weekend."

"i do not want her to see me like this." not yet. he said it easily enough, but at ferdie's soft, sad murmur as to what on earth he means, he realises he himself does not really know.

after some time he notices she is still holding the letter, gazing at it fervently for an unknown reason. when she catches his gaze she murmurs "would _you_ ever..." and then trails off very anxiously, with a strange smile. they look into eachother for a moment, many different things centring around one basic question, passing between them breathlessly, before hubert looks down uncertainly, and the moment passes.

  
*

"your hair is getting longer." ferdie folds her fingers through it, in it, as they recline together of an evening.

"ah, mm." he thinks better of saying any more, yet. and savours the unfamiliar feeling of her hands in there, smoothing the turbulent frays down into nothing.

"it's so thick and wavy." her voice was far away, not so different a tone as when admiring a fine foal's mane. as though surprised to the core that it could grow something no-one asked it to, all by its own power. but her voice is, thankfully, some shades yet warmer. "a little oilier, tighter waves than mine. impossibly lovely - i didn't expect it."

"it was dreadful in my student days, yes, no need to revisit that ground."

"i didn't say such!" huffing embarrassedly, she pulls ever so slightly on it, and hubert turns his head into that, smirking lazily up into his dearest one's face.

"you can say whatever you like to me. i'm very at my ease right now."

ferdie lets slip her full, merry smile, that only comes out when hubert has said something strange. she is still playing with his hair, near the roots, then his very eyelashes. it hadn't been strange at all.

*

ferdie has been ready for half an hour. he can't remember where they are going. _she_ hums peacefully at his side, trying different earrings patiently - he scowls down into their mirror, still entirely dressed down. for ten minutes hubert has supposedly been arranging his hair. he stares quite lower for a very long time while ferdie is distracted, feeling blood in his ears faster, hotter and stranger. he should be very cold in his present state of dress.

"would that my hair was longer already. i can't do anything with this," he snarls, throwing the wretched locks away, impatiently crossing towards their wardrobe instead, rifling through it haphazardly. he is looking for something, something. but where is it? why can he not find it?

his arms and hands are shaking viciously, which is extremely vexing as he pushes the hangers from side to side. he can't work with these limbs like this. his wretched prison is still always getting in his way.

"you're having a bad turn," ferdie whispers, suddenly close behind him. he ignores her, irritated by her presence when he's busy, there is so much to do. lady edelgard is expecting his results promptly. doesn't ferdie know better than to interrupt him while he's working?

no, no, he is getting dressed. but he can't decide what to wear. nothing, nothing suits. this is entirely unacceptable of himself. feel it, can't he hear the cries of pain from his dear comrades, waiting for his vital intelligence? the smell of blood is just out of mind. there is no time to waste. each choice is critical. this decision is vital.

"dear, dear, it's okay. look, we don't have to go anywhere tonight. i don't think we should. please, we'll stay right here. you don't even have to wear anything at all with me." she stretches her hands out between them as he turns back with knit, twitching brows. she poorly hides her worried desperation. hubert's eyes flick to her, runs his eyes across her heavy ruffled dress, deep scarlets and pristine rose. and he feels her eyes upon him too.

"i would rather be the one covered."

"oh, darling."

"i never thought i'd get this far. my body was an animated corpse, all that time."

she doesn't miss a beat. "you were alive all this time."

"i know! i know! that's what's so difficult to bear!"

tears pinprick his eyes, which irritates him as at any time, and he turns away in shame, not willing to frustrate her with this irrelevant farce. he knows her beautiful form is littered with scars, but they both know it is his own pallid body which _really_ took everything with them, inside. someone had to remember. he has, has to maintain the records. he's a vestra - isn't he?

but when his hands begin to shake again, ferdie takes them and places them, ludicrously, around her waist as if to take him into dance. his pulse stutters again, but in a different direction. he follows it blindly.

"i grew my hair in the sun. i'll help you here. come on into the light, little shadow."

she's always sure she can distract him back home when he gets like this. he smiles coyly, shyly. with his eyes closed against her hair, she seems the taller one. "now i'm in _your_ shadow."

"well, _flowers_ can grow in the shadows too. there's some behind our house. yes, yes, come into the shadow of my tree. i swear, it'll grow here."

"oh, a tree? do you grow oranges up there?"

she snickers headily against his ear. "hmm, maybe it'll grow on laughter." they are waltzing distractedly through the nonsense talk. perhaps this moment is all there is.

"well, we have no shortage of that."  
"because i'm such an entertaining young lady?"

"oh, yes. that is for certain." they are slowing meaningfully. "don't leave me tonight," he mutters desperately, huskily, pressing languid kisses into her bare shoulder, dragging his nose across it. her perfume tonight is rapturously heavy. he doesn't mean anything worrying by his scant words, but ferdie grips his hair with emotion and her tone shifts to bittersweet.

"i know. i wouldn't go anywhere else at all, ever. we're okay. we're okay."

**

  
after a few weeks of morning work in the garden, they have been having a pleasant summer so far. his feeble muscles ache nicely. she sits in his lap and sings him a careless melody as he plaits her radiant locks, slips flowers he cut in there. "there we go. beautiful, as ever." he slots her final hair pin in place. he has always been good at this work, too. but, he reminds himself obediently, it isn't work if he is enjoying himself. the breeze caresses them through the sunlit open window. unconditionally.

"yes, we match."

"oh really," hubert mumbles darkly.

"mm-hmm," ferdie hums it easily, turning around and taking his hands, arms, heart. tucks her fingers beneath his jaw, his fine cheekbones, curling smile, while he lets her do it awkwardly, perfectly still. "lovely."

he knows he has always hissed derisively whenever she has had chance to deem him handsome, or some such nonsense, and she has stopped doing it, he more and more willing in exchange to let her cautiously run her fingers over his form wordlessly as though he were a pliant, half-suspicious cat. he hadn't realised she had been searching for a better word.

  
*

"i'm the same, i'm the same as you," he cries. he is not sure what day it is.  
"i know, i know. i'll always know. follow me."

**

"though i really am dreadfully tall," he states apropos of naught one better day, while they are arranging the very last business at their old shared desk in enbarr, the tail end of total resignation. more and more nobles are returning to the capital for a time, due to the advent of a certain very special imperial event. it is a good opportunity. once they finally officialise aegir's succession onto ferdie's younger sister and her husband, they will not need to return here on business again - only to see friends. after this they will be truly free. "yes, i know, i have made use of it. but it was hardly my idea to have to stoop down to whisper in lady edelgard's ear." ferdie pauses to rub at his bad back. "why thank you so much," is his additional dry mutter.

"well your deathly knight fellow was taller."  
"they're not a fellow anymore, though i already knew. and anyway, i did take keen notice of that trait myself thank you."  
"ohh, so THAT'S why you had your little thing with them back then?"  
"it. it was a factor."

he knows jeritza is going along a journey not so different, but he cannot bear to seek them out, not even now he is reacclimating himself to wider company. it is bad enough seeing lady edelgard regularly. he and she had embraced like they never had before, and they had shared many exchanges, so far several entirely wordless amidst the unfamiliar stilt of conversation, hubert knowing too much is revealed in his lost eyes. there is an impossible distance between them now. take me with you, where are you? we used to walk the very same path, will you show me how to find our way again? she is not so further along in life's course than him, she says. everyone is struggling with working out how to live. but there is nothing he can say to an expectant mother. he is nothing like that.

  
*

"and this is my first ball as i am now! and what a special one! it has been so long since we've done something like this. i don't blame you dear, i just cannot wait to present myself! and to see everyone again, of course."  
"i admire your energy," he murmurs distantly. ferdie raises a polite eyebrow. "i mean well. i've told you before. your optimism is blinding. i can't keep up. but i have accepted that."

she seems to decide on taking it as a compliment, from him at least. though her eyes are sad.  
"you have it too," she tells him gently. her hand is on his arm, rubbing sweet circles. as though looking down at a death bed. "you've done so much. you still do."  
"i am very tired, darling," is all he decides to say. she keeps smiling gently, though tears have budded at her eyes. yes. even on the good days, it's like this.

  
*

  
"i just don't know if i have the energy for any of this," he tries to put it, resolutely setting aside the beautiful midnight black dress, one he has even worn in public before. his words annoy even him. he knows he never says anything new. he is losing.

"you had the energy for me."

"that's, it was different, it, it wasn't work."

"oh, thank you very much. why? was i just a distraction?"

"no, no darling, i... i'm sorry, i don't know what i mean. you were worth it, i'm not sure if..."

"you are worth it, too. please."

he laughs weakly, yes, feeling very weak. "because i was worth _your_ energy? you have so much anyway."

"because you're still alive."

  
*

  
"it's okay that it's not worth it, is what i mean."

"what?? the truth?" at that urgent word, it hurts.

"the real work of mine is done. i see that again now. i decided to give my life to it, and what is left is, i'm as far as i can go, no doubt. but it's okay. i don't mind any more." and there are new hresvelgs. things could be worse.

"this is the real work." she pats his chest, deeply and firmly, looking into it as if through his ribs, to the very centre of his secret heart. her eyes are very strong. he looks down into them with dismay. they are sometimes a touch too bright.

"i'm fine," he snaps. voice breaking, head spinning. "this is all the best i can hope for. it's a miracle any of us are still alive, particularly me. we could still die at any time. we could. i thought we were going to stop talking about this. i don't need any help. forget what lady edelgard told you."

"yes, you are the master of reason. so tell me then, magician, if there's really no power left in you!" she pulls away. inwardly, hubert rolls his eyes. when she gets theatrical, he's really in for a trip. but then his eyes stay pinpoint fixed on her. his heart is quavering.

she's turned away, hands on hips. looking back as she states firmly, "because i don't believe it! i never will!" hair shimmering radiantly in the last light of the day. _she's already there._ she walks away, muttering crossly and hubert's heart beats wildly after her, no, no, don't go, don't leave me. don't go on ahead without me. 

*

they are together, all the black eagles come to roost, them triumphantly brought together for the birth of the twin imperial children - separate journeys crossing once more to witness life. she is so very glad that they are all safe. it seems as good a time as any to say what must be said.

it is very good to see them.

"you will be being the ladies vestraegir!" petra.  
"i-i don't want to get anything wrong... is there some sort of new name we should know?" bernadetta.  
"yeah, you could choose anything!" caspar.  
"i'm terrified, this could truly be anything." linhardt.  
"but of course we'll be supportive what _ever_ it is." dorothea.  
"hubie is fine," she responds calmly, not expecting the raucous cries of joy, shock and glee that echo forth. ferdie is grinning with full love in her eyes next to dorothea who buries her face in her shoulder, shaken with graceful mirth. hubie witnesses their reactions with disgruntled confusion at first, but their nostalgic voices ring like peaceful bells in her heart. (how unlike her, to feel nostalgia.) lady edelgard just smiles very deeply.

she supposes it is not as austere as they were expecting, or perhaps too sentimental. but they don't understand. they always had her.

she was always theirs.

  
*

"hubie, what if you could go back through a door? to the past, i mean. if only we could ever go back and receive closure. would it not be such a help? would you not say anything different to... to anyone?"  
senior vestra was not to be invoked if it could be helped, but for once, his daughter is at some ease despite the implicative transgression.

"i think i would. but - not to him."

oh, if she _only_ could... but is it not more of a door to the future she needs? through the door out to the beginning, the myriad possibilities, all between. and is that not she - a feared magician, enactor, catalyst... creator, of transformation. she helped control the course of the future - in no small part. does she not have power? the door through and around - space and time - the entire way around. to somewhere different. a secret door. it's not too late...

  
(but, you know. it _is_ easier for ferdie to fit through that transformative passage, no matter her heavy brows or bold muscles. she was always two steps from it, a quick waltz into an easier dance. it was merely bringing a muse into the light, form fully revealed under the far sky, truer for the light upon it. hubert's work is re-animating his own corpse.

one _can_ bring a dead candle to life, he thinks. after all, he was indeed born with strong magic - and fire is magic too. but even candles have limits. ferdie thinks it will be enough for him to live truly, but now he yet more keenly feels the fizz of his own brain rapidly consuming its own fuel. there is something terrible coming. his whole life he has been waiting for the wick to run out, and now he is really jinxing it. his magic was indeed, always the dark kind that burns one's own very life force. his hands are already ruined.

 _no_ , ferdie had said once, enclosing them, putting her own under them so hubert had to hold her. _they still work._ )

  
*

  
"i should be with them. i have to go attend them."  
"who??"  
"the twins. i'm, this is my job."  
"...there are no vestras any more." comes the voice of the blurry figure beside her, gently.  
"oh," she blinks, puzzled. "oh, good."  
"come away with me to bed, dear."

she looks up at her, as if noticing her for the first time. her face is not very familiar at this moment, but it is dearly beautiful. and this mysterious other woman gazes back her solidly, and then finally, sadly starts to explain, "i'm-"  
"no, it's okay. yes, i will go with you." she feels herself blushing as she is led away. no matter what, she knows it was this woman who taught her how to do that.

  
*

  
"there is nothing left!" his cry was something like a wailing laugh, terrible even for himself to hear. ferdie stands still and watches him, he can't read her expression. her eyes are white to him. _i know i'm letting go. don't you think i know it, aegir? woman?_

where did you go? are you safe? are we safe? he thought - he - she thought, she, would be able to understand now, but it is all getting further away. the light, the truth. the shadows have slithered even here. they came with him. he couldn't kill them. it is too late.

resurrect me. i beg of you.

ferdie offers her hands, not approaching the corpse cautiously. she extends them like offering a rope to the fallen. they are taken with great suffocating breaths like from the drowning. 

"who is your true enemy now? who is really chasing you?"

i don't know.

***

  
she did not watch her go. off to the capital for the necessary trip of business ferdie had herself wanted to refuse. there weren't supposed to have been any more duties. typical, hmm? there had been many tears at their parting. strange - that ferdie was worried about her. this was how she had always been, really. it had always been this shadowed way. this was her true natural state, not a bad turn. getting truer. how that vexing woman could be worried about _her_ safe in aegir, yet go off to enbarr, city of intrigue, of danger! hubert will probably never see her again.

this is it. this is it. though it was a long time ago, you know, that she had first realised something - how using magic close to sleeping can inspire vivid, not quite lucid dreams. always entwined with the images present in one's mind immediately before rest. one can experience some real hurt in them. she thinks of it now, lying in the bed she shares with her wife, who is gone. 

it was another magician who had caused her to realise, through a very emotional conversation, that it was not a personal problem but one shared by all magicians - dorothea, who could not allow her traumatic nightmares to be coloured unnecessarily. for the sake of her health, a precious thing for some, it seemed. and she would always refuse to use magic at night if she could, in the old days. _i'm so sorry, for everything._ but hubert was thinking of a lot of things now herself. many things.

ferdie has gotten her to stop magic for her hands, there being little need any more anyway, out here, but sometimes she calls it up. she looks at it. she examines the vivid pinks and indigos of her body's rich magics, turns them over in her hand. how incredible, to have such transformative power in one's hand. yes, in her hands of death.

please, she implores she doesn't know who, like a child before the cruel goddess, tears sliding down her nose quite hot now, curled into a crooked cocoon. i implore you. present me with the truth. i will take whatever you want to show me. even if it is the very end. transform me...

  
*  
~~~  
~~~  
the shadows play with her hem, whispering and laughing and crying. in the nightmarish haze of twisted dream memory, she realises this must have been what she had been waiting for. i knew my time would catch up with me. but the chaotic melodies crawl along her very veins. she can't remember why she is here.

she feels a presence, thick and portending on the air. where is she? when is she? "father?" she calls in her low, weak voice, trembling. but there is no answer. that's right. how could there be? her hands spasm. she looks down at them in horror, feeling the blood in her body coiling around her bones in dread and action and horror - remember? remember? REMEMBER?

  
"he's not here."

the sullen voice behind her startles her clean out of the panic, in a way only dreamlike. heart beating into a puzzled, less wicked rhythm, she pauses only to breathe and turns around.

he is very small. she isn't sure if she remembers it being like that. he fixes her with a poorly practiced glare, somewhat like a kitten sure the milk's poisoned. she takes another breath, this time to speak.

"well. hello."

  
*

"...so you see, he's not here." the boy's gaze turns hard and lonely and many things. their strained conversation has led back. "he'll be in his office no doubt, plotting wicked things."

"don't you think that's a little unwarranted? you don't know that," she cautions crisply, testing him.

"you know that. don't you?" the dream gets creepily distorted for a moment, and then the child's face looks young and moody again like he never spoke. "and i will NEVER stop hating those that i hate!! that is all i can do. you can never take that away from me."

well, she thinks, wryly, feeling a little heat at her cheeks. that's not going to be entirely true. you have a lot coming for you, don't you now? she stands and stretches, having been squatting by his side while entertaining his uninvited complaints against each of the insidious adults in his life.

"you're too tall. don't think you can intimidate _me_ , you... degenerate!"

"i see that would be futile."

"you look like that wretched aegir boy with the long hair. i see him at court. he looks like a girl! it's not fair."

"ah. well, you needn't worry, it will get snipped off before he's sent to big school."

"what?? that's such a waste!"

she pinches her nose while smiling thinly, anticipating a headache even though she supposes she is in some kind of warped dream vision right now? or something. what was it? she still can't really remember what is going on. but she definitely had no idea he was truly this obstinate, even then. even now.

  
perhaps there is something she can do here. perhaps this is real. she could change the tides of this wretched nation's fate. this is a precious opprtunity. isn't this what she always dreamed of? but what was it she had wished to say?

"listen to me. you need to pull your life together, do you understand me? it is more critical than you ever knew."

but the boy seems stuck on a certain, embarrassing point. "why am i here? why did you bring me here? i never wished to be born. i never wished to be trapped in this prison of life - this corpse!"

"i didn't arrange that," she hisses icily. "you'd have to take that up with two other individuals." though her heart is very tight. "well, would you like me to correct that little mistake? look here," and she displays a knife from a little pocket of her skirts.

he subtly displays his own, clumsily, from his sleeve. "don't test me, old lady..."

"ah. stalemate." she pats him wearily on the shoulder, a gesture he accepts.

"i simply cannot allow you to take my life, miss. there's something i have to do first."

"i'm married," but he imperiously cuts her off with a wave off his dead pale fingers.

"i have my duty of birthright."

"but you don't really care for birthright itself, do you?"

"how - how did you know? it is true... i don't care what our parents say. there'd be nothing for me in this world otherwise anyway. i have offered my life to her."

_i wonder, would you do such if you knew what your life could be worth? if you wanted it yourself?_

"and?"  
"i love her. i -"  
"who? who?"  
"h-her. edelgard..." but his brow is knit, as if he isn't really sure who he is talking about.

the knowledge of true life, hazy in dream to them both. yes, that's right, there was someone they shared. her own grasp on who edelgard is and what she had represented then, represents now - (it was a purer knowledge then - when it was only they who knew the truth of this world - children against adults) the truth - Truth - has begun to fade from her nightmarish awareness, too.

"the best person - the only one - the dearest girl. she is everything to me. i'm for her, i'm - her, no that's not right. i, i wish, she's all i admire. i, i wish -" and he looks strained again, as if lost in thought, or afraid to blaspheme.

"there's no one else here. and what about you? and what about you?"

he looks up at her with imploring eyes that speak of everything that's to come.

"i wish i could be -"

she wakes.

  
she had wanted to hold him tight, tell him she was so dearly sorry. they - they will take her away from you. everything will change, again. you will put yourself on hold, for her. but you never should have lost yourself. and it won't be her fault, oh not at all, but it is the end of you both, for now. if he could only... but what could she have told him? he and her, she and him. which one was...?

she's getting confused. besides, it was but a dream. he was but a dream. and for him - this was the dream.

_she was his dream._

he plays with the ends of his hair, long as night. and turns, and enters this time, into a dreamless, pure rest. her last image before sleep is of her wife and her own child self, hand in hand and looking back at him, waiting for him - her - Her - at the door to light.  
~~~  
~~~  
*

  
"helena."

"what? ohh, why that's such a pretty- ah..." her voice lowers gently. "was that your mother's name, perhaps? i never knew it."

"don't be vile. you think i want to bear a name that must once have been crooned in my father's voice? no, i, witnessed it i suppose. in one of my mother's belongings, the few that were sent to her sister after her passing. scribbled in the margins of her personal pregnancy records, plans for names. in case i was, well."

"in case you were," and sweetly she draws her legs around the both of them under their blankets.

"well it's less ostentatious than freya," helena mumbles self-consciously after a few moments. face burrowed into her wife's arm.

"wh- you said you liked it!"

"i do," she murmurs more, burrows more. "i do."

  
*

("i'm not sure if i want the change to be else but a quiet affair, only for the ledgers. we'll still be the vestraegirs anyway."  
"we will be.")

("so what else do you want to do now?")

***  
***

"just run your hand down her neck and she'll settle," freya chatters busily, the reins in her hand only one pair of several as she runs her eyes beyond their shoulders while doing a head count of her little herd - apparently completely uninterested that her wife is in peril. "she's not so different to a regular horse as i'm sure you can see."

helena grumbles in agreement as the pegasus noses at her hair again, eyes entirely too beady. it's true that her jet coat is exquisitely beautiful, but helena had kind of expected her to possess a disposition in keeping to her elegant, stately look. they'll both be old hags before this little project works.

"there's no way i'm getting up there this year. she'll kill me on land before she drops me from the air."

freya finally looks her way, gaping with shock at such cruel comments. not out of concern for helena's safety, of course. "she'll be perfectly reliable! i thought you promised to open your silly old heart to her? i still maintain that you don't need to conquer this. but if you can't even handle a pegasus on the ground, how will you manage being a schoolmistress?"

"schoolmistress?? it's an academy of espionage," helena insists, painfully aware that technically, an academy _is_ a school and so such a title is apt. "future interns to work at enbarr and guide the cabinet from the shadows, with a vital purpose to utilise ethical spywork across the country for-"

"yes, i know, dear. ah, watch out," freya cautions, guiding the winged cretin from her wife's head once more. "let's return and arrange for dinner. i think everyone here is clearly in need of refreshment."

"hang on ferdie, i'm putting this up," helena mutters darkly, arranging her tresses into a harried bun. the old nickname comes out of her at times, as she knows freya treasures it. they have their own private nostalgia.

"oh, how matronly! you look exactly befitting your new station. and your hair's almost entirely out of your eyes! shall we?"

with a fond sigh, helena takes her beloved's arm as they motherly corral the lot back to the stables.

  
**

  
"i do worry about them when it's after hours," helena scowls as they pass the empty dormitory on their daily evening walk, constructed in the past few years on their grounds for hers and freya's pupils to share. she knows they are at the pubs the hill over every weekend, where there is one of the larger settlements in aegir. "they should stay in their rooms and work, as we often did. that's where my wards are all set up." she startles at a displacement of twigs in the brush as they walk, eyes narrowed. only a sparrow. "they should know better than any that you must be doubly on your guard as night falls."

"come on darling. it's the garland moon. and no great harm has followed us into this era, not in truth. it's your little spies that watch over _you_ when you go into town."

"they think i can't see them when i'm not wearing my glasses," she grumbles. "as if i need taken care of."

*

they linger at the edge of the paddock, gazing up at the blue sea star one late evening. their pegasus stands calmly against helena's familiar touch, with the wings over the pair of them protectively. her shining mane reflects the sky's glow like it too is a black pane of starlit night.

"i'm not so sure I really need to get up there any more." ferdie watches her speak, with a curious, deep smile as she holds the placid beast's reins loosely like a bundle of flowers. "anyway, they can tell when you're scared, yes? i don't want to be such a burden on her life."

"well, she'll always be on your side."

"yes, yes," helena mutters, brushing the creature awkwardly atop her neck while their ferdie prepares to draw her back to the stables for the night, helena's fingers lingering in the hair as dark and soft as shadows there.

"just make sure she's safe," she calls after them, frowning as they seem to be unaware of a bundle of sharp stones on the grass. don't they see them? and they both step over them nimbly.

ferdie calls back, "don't worry! one of your spy kids is working part-time at the stable after school!"

"excuse me???" helena squawks, but there is no further reply, only her wife's merry step as she skips gaily away into the evening distance. well. at least it will be an exercise in unconventional terrain. with homework to learn how to conceal oneself within a bale of hay, it could be a useful extracurricular learning experience.

*

"excuse me, i'd like a word with you," helena calls out, possibly in her no-nonsense instructor voice, as freya is grinning when she saunters over. she had apparently been collecting flowers, and gifts some into the vase nearby on her way. they don't normally get a chance to speak during the day now that freya has opened up the stables to her own new pupils, but right now everyone is away at the mess hall both sets share for lunch. she always comes at the end of the day to pick helena up, lingering beneath this same windowsill. sometimes coming through the door, and then they walk home together, but she is here now too. helena's heart quickens with the unexpected meeting, but she has to stay serious.

"your - horse people are always loitering around my schoolroom. after class."

"i thought it wasn't a school!"

"just keep them in line. i don't want them - distracting my lot. who have the entire nation's future on their shoulders!"

"what sort of distraction are you meaning?" she looks up innocently from below the windowsill, eyes glimmering. helena doesn't move an inch, and her ferdie pushes up to close the distance right through the open window. her only perfume, straw and life. her lips soft as dew. they always kissed just like this, really. they always met through a secret door.

  
_it was a good day. there are good days. that dear one looks back again before she disappears out of clear sight back to her own business, grinning brightly with sun in her hair and eyes too, and i watch her walk away from me (but it's going to be alright) and through the rays of the sun playing upon her. i love her. and i'll go after her, i'll meet up with her first, she won't have to come to me. she won't have to cross the door for me to see her again. we're already safely through it. she's stopped to look at me from over there, looking not unlike how she did in her early twenties, face shielded within the doors of light, of memory. as if a mirror reflecting back my own self. yes, i love her._

**Author's Note:**

> i realise i kind of went off there entirely doing my own thing with them. that's trans power babey! wasn't my idea to turn hubert von vestra into a teacher it was begrudgingly hers, shut up
> 
> hubert means "bright heart". helena means "light". yeah
> 
> thank you so much for reading.


End file.
